British keyboard non working keys

so I finally got around to setting up my reform, and I have a few keys that appear not to do what they’re supposed to. Keyboard is set to generic 104 key in kde settings, layout is British English. ( have also tried the windows and dead keys layouts)

my backslash-and-pipe key doesn’t produce any output in kwrite, regardless of whether or not its shifted, however, in konsole it incorrectly produces a tilde when shifted, and nothing otherwise.

using the box to assign a shortcut to switching kb layout as a test, the right alt and the hyper key appear not to be acknowledged at all. the compose key is recognised but identified as garbage symbols.

EDIT: I flashed unmodified kb firmware from git yesterday, doesnt appear to have changed anything from previously

Any suggestions?